Carthaginians speaks Hebrew?

[Arcani_Bar_Kochba]

just to weigh in on this. Wherever the guy got his info from saying that Mishnaic Hebrew comes from punic, needs some serious scrutiny.

Either he means that Ancient Hebrew itself was a phoenician derivative, which is a whole other convo, or he means that somehow Ancient Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew are two different languages.

In order to answer the second question we first need to establish whether or not biblical hebrew counts as ancient hebrew.

If we all agree that biblical hebrew does indeed mean ancient hebrew, then i can't support the idea that Mishnaic hebrew is from punic or som other eastern language. Mishnaic hebrew isnt very different from Biblical hebrew generally. Some words had been imported from other languages, and some words had fallen out of use, but from a standpoint of grammar and the overwhelming majority of the shared vocabulary between the two, i totally fail to understand how anyone can claim that mishnaic hebrew comes from some other culture.

unless theres a premise here that we havent been informed of, such as "punic and ancient hebrew were virtually identical anyway", or unless this is really an extremely nuanced argument, then i have to remain incredulous in the extreme about the ideas presented here.

@foot.

citing one authority doesn't mean anything, cite 10 and then you might be getting somewhere. Academicians are notorious for infighting and disagreeing amongst themselves. Furthermore authoring an original theory, regardless of how ludicrous is a way to earn tenure or general standing within the academic community.

i'll be honest, usually you have alot of valuable contributions to make, and i usually respect your positions on things in these forums, but seeing you here waving around a reference based on one "authority" disappoints me. We dont even know when he wrote the work cited, it could have been in te 1800's for all we know right now. We dont know his sources, we dont know how he came to his conclusions.

What we do know is that he is running against the grain of the common academic consensus in place right now.

In summary, i find the idea that Mishnaic Period Hebrew comes not from Ancient Hebrew, a language spoken by the people in question themselves, but rather Punic, a language spoken by a different nation, to be suspect in the extreme, and not easily defended by citing one professor of eastern languages.

Shame on you for trying, and shame on the rest for eating this up so easily.

I love EB! Keep up the great work everyone!